21 · Deciding
Loss Aversion
Losing something feels worse than gaining the same thing feels good.
Evidence: Holds, with limitsWhat we do with it
- 01
Framing changes the choice. “Keep your saved work” lands harder than “save your work”.
- 02
Free trials work partly because people don't want to give up what they've started using. Make canceling as easy as starting.
- 03
Don't use it to scare people. Fake countdowns and “you'll lose everything” warnings are out.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
A cancel page that warns “You'll lose everything forever!” when an export is one click away.
Do
A cancel page that says what happens to your data, and offers the export in plain words.
The evidence
What the research says.
Prospect theory has held up well: in 2020 Kai Ruggeri and colleagues re-ran the original 1979 questions with 4,098 people in 19 countries, and 12 of the 13 key patterns repeated. Loss aversion itself is more argued over. David Gal and Derek Rucker argued in 2018 that it's much less general than claimed, and depends on the situation. Alexander Brown and colleagues pooled 607 estimates from 150 papers in 2024 and found losses weighed about twice as much as gains on average (a coefficient of 1.96), with wide variation from study to study.
How our view changed
We expect it with things people already have or have started, like a trial or saved work. We don't assume it everywhere.
Sources
- Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2).
- Gal, D., & Rucker, D. D. (2018). The loss of loss aversion: Will it loom larger than its gain? Journal of Consumer Psychology, 28(3).
- Ruggeri, K., et al. (2020). Replicating patterns of prospect theory for decision under risk. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(6).
- Brown, A. L., Imai, T., Vieider, F. M., & Camerer, C. F. (2024). Meta-analysis of empirical estimates of loss aversion. Journal of Economic Literature, 62(2).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current